NAKBA
NAKBA – The Palestinian Catastrophe.
Israel was established as a Jewish state on May 15, 1948 in the midst of a war with the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab countries. At the end of that war and the signing of the ceasefire agreements in 1949, the magnitude of the Arab defeat and the Palestinian disaster became clear to all sides concerned. The tiny Jewish community in Palestine (about 650,000 persons) was able to defeat the Palestinians (1,350,000) and the Arab armies who came to their help. The Arabs failed to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. Furthermore, Israel was established on a larger territory than the one allocated to it by the U.N. partition plan. As for the Arab state allocated for the Palestinians, it has not established until this date, and the Palestinian people have been stateless since 1948.
Israel was established on about 78% of historical Palestine. The rest of the country was divided between Jordan (the West Bank) and Egypt (the Gaza Strip). Thus, Zionism was able to celebrate the achievement of its main goal (a Jewish state), while the Palestinians embarked on commemorating the loss of their homeland. The name of Palestine was removed from the world atlas and the maps of the Middle East. The Palestinians lost their country and became a stateless people dismembered into separate and marginalized communities. This is in a nutshell the meaning and implications of the Palestinian catastrophe in 1948.
The Palestinian society was shattered, and over half of it (about 750,000 people) became refugees who lost home, lands and other properties. Most of the refugees embarked on a new life from scratch in the refugee camps. The stateless Palestinians were marginalized and discriminated against by Israel and the hosting Arab countries. The name of the game for the traumatized Palestinians at least during the first decade of the Nakbah (1948-1958) was survival. However, from the 1960’s on they reorganized themselves and started a new military and political struggle for liberating the homeland and establishing an independent state.
Unlike many traumatic events, the Nakbah and its implications are not a one-time event. It is rather the accumulation of the disaster in 1948, and the successive plights of the Palestinians during the past six decades. From a Palestinian perspective, they are the victims of the Zionists who solved the Jewish problem at their expense. The Jews who suffered from anti-Semitism in Europe and from being stateless communities established a state in Palestine, and turned the Palestinians into a stateless people.
Hence, the Palestinians are struggling for self-determination, and opt to put an end to the injustices inflected on them. Being victimized by the victims of Europe complicates the Palestinian quest for a just solution to their tragedy. Unfortunately, sixty years after their disaster in 1948, new chapters of Palestinian sufferings continue to plague the realities of the Middle East.
Adel Manna is Director of the Center for the Study of Arab Society in Israel at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.
